Weight Loss Lasagna
It might not have pasta sheets but there must be some layers to do justice to the name. Don’t worry; veggies are there to the rescue! Skinny veggie slices works as a great substitute to pasta sheets and up the health quotient of this Italian delight, manifold. This recipe for healthy lasagna uses eggplant slices for the layers but zucchini and butternut squash works equally well for this purpose too.
Apart from the veggie strata, a good lasagna also calls for a delicious, creamy sauce which will make the dish moist, hearty and obviously drool-worthy. Hence, this lasagna is soaked in a tangy meat sauce which makes every spoonful into an ultimate indulgence. Another gooey walnut sauce makes the topping and compensates for the melted cheese in the traditional stuff. This sauce is so creamy that it’s is hard to believe that the sauce is 100% dairy-free.
Veggie layer, meat sauce, walnut ‘cheese-like’ sauce – it’s a wonderful threesome which is so soul-satisfying that you don’t really need to be a fitness enthusiast to give it a go.
Ingredients:
Serves: 8-10
- 2 eggplants, sliced into 1/8’’ thin slices
- 1 tbsp ground pork sausage
- 1 lb 96% lean ground beef
- 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
- 2 ½ cups frozen spinach, thawed and drained
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
- 1 large yellow onion, peeled and minced
- ½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
- 1 ½ cups raw walnuts
- 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
- ¾ cup almond milk
- 1 tbsp oregano
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ cup warm water
- Olive oil, as required
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Method:
- Set your oven to broil mode and warm it up to 500 degrees F.
- Grease each eggplant slices with a lashing of olive oil and lay them out, side by side, onto a baking sheet; you might need to work in batches.
- Broil them in the hot oven for 10 minutes, flipping them over halfway through cooking, until they are roasted.
- Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a saucepan over moderate heat and toss the chopped onion as well as garlic into it.
- Sauté for 5 minutes, stirring often, until the onions turn lucid and stir in both kinds of ground meat.
- Cook further for 3-4 minutes, stirring at times and breaking the lumps with the spatula, until they brown evenly.
- Sprinkle a dash of ground oregano into it empty the cans of tomato sauce as well as diced tomatoes into it.
- Stir them all together and cook for a couple of minutes.
- Place a lid on top to cover and bring it to a simmer.
- Continue to simmer over slow flame for 10 minutes and start preparing for the walnut sauce in the meantime.
- To make this sauce, dump the walnuts and pumpkin seeds into a blender and pour in water as well as the almond milk.
- Sprinkle ground nutmeg into it and pulse them for 2 minutes to form a smooth puree.
- Reset the temperature of your oven to 375 degrees F.
- To assemble, grease a 13’’x9’’ baking dish with few drops of olive oil and spread ½ cup of the meat sauce onto it base.
- Lay out ½ of the broiled eggplant slices on top and scatter half of the spinach over them.
- Smother them with ½ of the walnut sauce and repeat the layers, finishing with the walnut sauce on top, until all of the ingredients are used up.
- Bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until the surface browns.
- Remove from oven and serve warm.